


struggle is not an illusion

by venndaai



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Altus Krem Aclassi, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, Qunari Dorian Pavus, Tama Bull, Trans Character, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 08:27:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21194633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: There were two other things about the magister that Bull noticed. One; he was aqun-athlok. Two; he’d never been to Seheron.





	struggle is not an illusion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/gifts).

> warning for implications of canon-typical institutional homophobia, conversion therapy, violence, brainwashing, child death, ptsd, etc.

Bull first met the magister when he entered the Dragon’s Head and, after a moment of looking around, adjusting to the smoky darkness, came over to the bar. He did a double take when he saw Bull behind it, but he recovered admirably fast. “Don’t suppose you have any northern wines on offer?” he asked, in the tone of one who expected to be disappointed, but there wasn’t any resentment or elitism there, just exhaustion. He didn’t look particularly magisterial. He was dressed in the light armor of an Inquisition scout, and there was no staff in sight. But his accent was pure high class Tevene. Bull only knew of one member of the Inquisition who that accent might fit. 

There were two other things about him that Bull noticed. One; he was aqun-athlok. Most people around him probably couldn’t tell, but Bull could. Two; he’d never been to Seheron. If he had, he wouldn’t have gotten over the unexpected sight of a seven-foot Qunari so easily. 

“Sure,” Bull said. “Not much choice, though. Vino Trevis or Vino Trevis?”

The magister grinned. He had a nice face for smiling. “You seem like a bartender of taste. I leave the decision to you.”

Bull knelt down to grab the bottle, a lengthy and arduous process, but the magister seemed perfectly patient. It was a quiet afternoon, not many patrons in the tavern, and Maryden was singing something low and peaceful. Bull breathed in the rich smell of the wine as it poured from its bottle into the magister’s glass. “Nice to meet you,” Bull said. “I’m called Iron Bull. What should I call you?”

“Cremisius,” the magister said. 

“That’s it? You ‘vints usually go in for more titles.”

“It’s all I care to keep.”

Bull grunted. “Cremisius is too much of a mouthful. You’ll be Krem.”

“What does too much of a- wait.” Krem’s brow wrinkled. “Iron Bull. I think I’ve heard of you. Didn’t you use to work in Nevarra, a few years ago? Running a- er-”

“A house of ill repute?” Bull said helpfully, grinning.

“Right.”

“I did, yeah. Best brothel in Nevarra City. But Dorian wanted to help the Inquisition, and it turned out they didn’t have space for that kind of establishment in Skyhold.”

“Who’s Dorian?”

“My business partner,” Bull said. “Hey, here he is now.”

“Yes, here I am,” Dorian said, clattering down the stairs. “Bad news; Sera won’t do it for less than five crates of fireworks. I’ll leave it to you to break it to Rocky. Hello, who’s this?”

“Dorian, this is Krem. Krem, this is my partner in crime, Dorian.”

“It’s Cremisius, actually,” Krem said, shaking Dorian’s hand, “but I suppose Krem will do. That accent- are you from Qarinus?”

“Oh, I’m from all over,” Dorian said, very lightly. “You do have a firm handshake. I admire that in a man.”

“Hey,” Bull interjected, “I saw him first. Find your own pretty ‘Vint.”

Krem laughed, a little nervously. Dorian patted him on the arm. “You’ll have to forgive my friend. She’s a little coarse at times, but she means well.”

Krem’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, and looked back at Bull with frank astonishment. 

She winked at him, and he flushed a fun shade of umber, and then smiled, shy and dangerously sweet. 

Bull had seen aqun-athlok among the bas before, of course. After nine years it would have been strange if she hadn’t, though the phenomenon was certainly rarer than it was on Par Vollen. It was also possible she had met more than she realized, since most of the time they did their best to pass as what the bas thought those with their role should look like. But she certainly hadn’t been the only sex worker in Nevarra who would have been considered aqun-athlok under the Qun. She’d gone out of her way to befriend the ones she met, and help them out where she could, feeling some sense of kinship, though she recognized that in many ways their lives had been very different from hers. 

Still, she didn’t know why this one in particular interested her so much. She just knew that whenever he came into the Dragon’s Head she ended up neglecting her other patrons to drink and chat with the ‘vint. 

They didn’t talk about his past, exactly, but she couldn’t help her old training, and the bits and pieces of the picture came together over many long afternoons. Krem was from Vyrantium, and he missed the smell of the sea and the food they sold at the docks there. His folks were members of an ancient Altus house. His father was dead, and she was sure Krem thought he’d been assassinated. He was not on speaking terms with his mother, and that had something to do with why he was in the south. He had a mentor, a woman called Mae, and he’d had a friend, a man called Felix who was dead now too. He hoped that the Inquisition could help him do something worthwhile with his life.

It was easy, to encourage him to talk about himself and steer the conversation away from her. At least it was easy for someone with her years of practice and training. But no one had assigned her to evaluate Krem’s mental health, and she tried to remember that, and offer up at least one confidence in return.

“Aren’t you going to ask?” she said.

“Ask what?” Krem replied.

“About the limp. You’ve gotta be wondering.”

“Sure,” Krem said. “Seemed rude to ask, though.”

“Poison,” Bull said. “Can do some weird shit to your body, even if you survive it.”

She’d been the only one to survive. It was because of her size, she’d been told later. Larger bodies could endure what smaller ones could not.

“So,” Krem asked, one day, “how’d you meet Dorian?”

“We ran away together,” Bull said. 

“From… from Par Vollen?” Krem said. “Was he a captive there?”

She shook her head. “No more than anyone else living there,” she said, after a moment. 

“But you both decided to run away.”

“The Qun asks more, of some people,” Bull said. “Sometimes the price is too high.”

_ You didn’t have to do this for me, _ Dorian had said, before he was Dorian, and she had replied, _ I didn’t do it for you. _ It had even been mostly true.

Asala-taar, they said in the viddathlok. Soul sickness. She was sent home to Par Vollen. There it was discovered that she could no longer teach children. She could no longer even bear to be around them for more than a few minutes. 

They made her a tamagena, and for a while she even enjoyed it. Sex was simple, and she was always in complete control. She did such a good job at it she even built up a reputation as someone who could handle more difficult cases. That was probably why they sent the human Ashkaari to her. She was the last step before reeducation. 

He wasn’t Dorian, then- or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he hadn’t been Dorian for some time- but he had Dorian’s savage, despairing smile. He laughed and told her she might as well send for the reeducators now, except that he wasn’t going to wait around for them to come for him. 

“Your supervisors say you do good work,” she said. 

“Oh yes,” he told her, with an arrogance that was almost- refreshing? “I’m a perfect Qunari worker, except for my inconvenient little bit of degeneracy.” 

“You’re not degenerate,” she said. “None of us can change our preferences.”

“Really?” he said. “You think they believe that in the viddathlok?” 

They’d break him there, that much was clear, and she realized that she didn’t want him to be broken. 

After that it was all oddly simple.

The first person Bull ever killed was a Tal-Vashoth spy. She was in chains, and the Ben-Hassrath were bringing her in for interrogation, presumably. Bull was sitting in a chair outside the hospital. She was still learning how to walk again, then. The rebellion of her body did not prevent her from killing the woman with her bare hands.

She had known the spy well, or thought she had. Often they'd chatted, in the kitchen, the smells of soup and spices hanging in the air. Afterward, any hint of that smell would make her stomach cramp and bile rise in her throat. 

Asala-taar, the reeducators said. They told her it was fixed. She wouldn’t hurt anyone again.

The second person she killed was the Tallis sent to hunt her and Ashkaari down. She remembered him every time her eye socket hurt. “Your soul is dust,” he’d whispered as he’d died, and she’d known it was true. 

There’d never been a third kill. She’d never been able to do it again. Sometimes, over the years, people had needed to die, but Dorian had taken care of those situations, or Skinner, once she had Skinner working for her. 

Perhaps that made her a coward.

"So you didn't become a mercenary," Krem said. "I've heard it's difficult finding other employment, when you're a gray horned giant."

"You heard right," Bull said. It was late afternoon, and the sun poured in through the windows of the tavern's back room with warm, honeyed heaviness. "Dorian should have left me. He could have gotten on fine on his own- he was fluent in five languages, and probably better read than half the scholars at the Nevarran University. But he didn't, because he's an idiot. Eventually he got an archival job in the Grand Mausoleum, and I found a business that could use my, let's call it specialized skillset. Didn't like the owner, though. Set up my own place as soon as I had the coin, and half the people there went with me."

"I heard of it," Krem said. "Called the... the Painted Dragon, right? What's with you and dragons?"

Bull shrugged, and sighed wistfully. "They're beautiful, and they'll fight to the death to protect their young. I always dreamed about seeing one, some day."

“Right,” Krem said. He took a long swallow of his beer, then slammed it down on the table. “How’d you like to come see a dragon up close?”

Dorian was enthusiastic enough, when she relayed Krem's proposition. "I saw a high dragon once, but only from quite a distance," he told her over drinks, after the tavern had gone quiet for the evening. "You know my tasks were books and dangerous learning, not creatures. Still, it would be interesting to compare a Southern dragon to what I saw of the one in the north." 

He was less thrilled to learn that they'd be going on the expedition with other members of the Inquisition's inner circle. "Solas? Do we really need him?" he asked Krem plaintively. "Aren't you enough mage for one expedition?"

"I thought you two were friends," Krem said, innocently. "I hear you talking in the library all the time."

Bull would have chuckled at Krem's shit-stirring if she wasn't already exhausted at the thought of more nights spent soothing Dorian's ruffled feathers after he got in more big arguments with the elven apostate. The weird thing was that Dorian, on some level, had more passion for the Qun than Bull ever had. He'd tear its failings apart whenever Bull gave him an opening, but he'd just as fervently argue for its civilizing potential to any southerner who'd listen. And Solas, unfortunately, seemed just as inexhaustibly ready to debate. 

"So," Krem said, during the midst of one of these arguments, as they trudged up the side of a mountain in the Fereldan Hinterlands. "do you not have an opinion on the topic? Or do you just prefer not to share it?"

Bull shrugged. "I've known people who thought they could change the Qun," she said. "Maybe they could, I don't know. I know I couldn't have. I made my choices, and now I'm living with them." She gave Krem a sideways glance. "I'm thinking you probably know a bit about that." 

"Yeah," Krem said. "I guess it's like they say, you can't go home again."

Bull thought that maybe Krem felt that same quiet ache, that occasional reminder of impossibly vast distances. 

"Are you doing all right?" Krem asked her, awkwardly. "We can always take more breaks."

"I'm good," Bull said. "I appreciate you all taking things at my pace." It had been years since she'd had to hike across rough ground, let alone climb a mountain, but she'd always kept up the long ingrained habits of exercise, and if her legs moved more slowly and shakily, they were still longer than anyone else's. The air was fresh and full of the calls of animals, but the pine forest was nothing like the jungle. 

"Up here," Scout Harding called in a hushed voice, and everyone fell silent with a sudden rush of anticipation. Bull pushed her body to its limits, scrambling up the final few feet. 

There was a distant cry, so resonant and full of alien desires that Bull felt her heart tremble. Then there was a flash of movement, and the dragon was soaring through the sky, miles away from them but still big enough to blind them as her scales flashed in the sun. Ataashi. Bull felt tears on her face, and a hand on her wrist. She tore her gaze away long enough to see her own wonder reflected in Dorian's eyes. 

In the end, there was really nothing she’d do differently, if she had to do it all again.


End file.
